I guess I will drop the combobreaker on this then.
The album is not good.
Now I guess I will admittedly start by saying I have never been a Jay Z fan. But I am a HUGE Kanye fan. So here goes.
My main problem with the album is substance. There is none. Besides maybe 1 or two tracks(New Day comes to mind), every single god damn song is about money, bitches, swag. I guess I shouldn't have expected anything deeper or meaningful when dealing with these artists, but Kanye on MBDTF at least had some substance to the lyrics. Some story, some emotion.This isn't necessarily a bad thing and it can still be a fun album when done properly. But it wasn't. It felt like a battle about who is cooler than the other, with no punchlines.
To me the album has no flow or direction. Besides the song structure which basically follow the simple pattern of Intro-Jay verse-Kanye verse-Hook-Repeat. I think with two of the biggest and most successful hip hop artists this decade would be able to be a little more creative. Nas and Marley did a better collab album than this last year, and the Blackstar which was made 15 years ago is lightyears better than this. Hell, Bad Meets Evil is better than this. WTT to me sounds like a bunch of singles thrown together like the album is a pop album. It is like a Nicki Minaj album or Kesha album. A collection of singles that will probably get a million views on youtube, but a forgettable album.
Some of the beats are real nice for a little bit. But usually they will get changed a lot by the end of the song. There are some flaws in a couple songs but I assume that is Kanye just going for that "vinyl" sound. I don't like some of the dubstep influences. And some of the samples in the beats kind of ruin it for me.
Jay Z is terrible. Whether it is the hater in me for Jay or my love for Kanye, I feel like Jay brings down almost every song. I am willing to bet that is me just being a hater, but if they had a version of this album without Jay I would probably listen to this again.
When I click on my Kanye playlist on iTunes I am just gonna pretend like this isn't there. This was really disappointing.